Growth response of Guinea Fowls fed diets containing bovine blood blended with cassava
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Date
2014-08-04
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Abstract
An 18 – week feeding trial was conducted to assess the effect of four types of bovine blood blended with cassava, hereafter referred to as BBLOCAM, to partially replace maize on the growth performance, haematological and blood biochemical parameters of guinea fowl keets. Two hundred and eighty five, 35 – day old local keets with a mean weight of 85.2g were randomly allocated to five dietary treatments with 57 keets in each treatment with 3 replicates per treatment. The dietary treatments consisted of T1 (the control diet), which contained maize as the main energy source; T2 (BBLOCAM II, 100 units cassava flour: 25 units fresh blood); T3 (BBLOCAM III, 100 units cassava flour: 33.33 units fresh blood), T4 (BBLOCAMIV, 100 units cassava flour: 50units fresh blood) and T5 (BBLOCAM V, 100 units cassava flour: 100 units fresh blood).Feed and water were provided ad libitum.
The mean daily feed intakes were 42.63g (T1), 43.56g (T2), 43.50g (T3), 43.33g (T4) and 42.69g (T5). The mean body weight gain for the dietary treatments T1, T2, T3, T4, and T5 were 996.40g, 958.00g, 982.70g, 965.00g and 942.70g, respectively. The intake of BBLOCAM did not have any significant (P>0.05) effect on growth performance. The feed conversion efficiency (FCE) did not vary significantly among treatment means. The dressed weight and dressing percentage showed significant differences among dietary treatments, which were variable and did not show a clear trend that could indicate the influence of BBLOCAM in the diets on the parameters.
There was a significant (P > 0.05) difference in the total cholesterol values between T1 and T4 but both T1 and T4 were not significantly different from T2, T3 and T5. The values for the high density lipoproteins were not significantly different among all the treatment means but the low density lipoproteins and triglycerides values differed significantly (P < 0.05) among their respective treatment means. The albumin, globulin and total protein values did not differ among dietary treatments. Hb, HCT, MCH, RBC and WBC did not also differ but MCHC and MCV values differed among the treatments but were within the reference range values.
A total of 15 mortality cases were recorded during the period which did not follow any trend attributable to the feeding of BBLOCAM as the highest percentage (33.3%) of mortality was recorded among the birds fed the control diet (T1) which contained none of the BBLOCAMs.
BBLOCAM diets confer better economic benefits compared to maize by greatly reducing feeding and production cost. It was therefore, concluded that increased productivity of poultry particularly guinea fowls could be achieved by feeding BBLOCAM based diets which could reduce cost significantly.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Animal Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science
(Animal Nutrition), 2014